Patterns of emotional availability between mothers and young children: Associations with risk factors for borderline personality disorder

Emotional availability (EA) characterizes a warm, close relationship between caregiver and child. We compared patterns (clusters) of EA on risk factors, including those for borderline personality disorder (BPD). We sampled 70 children aged 4 to 7 years from low socio‐economic backgrounds: 51% of whose mothers had BPD. We coded filmed interactions for EA: mothers' sensitivity, structuring, non‐intrusiveness, non‐hostility, and children's responsiveness to, and involvement of, mothers. We additionally coded children's over‐responsiveness and over‐involvement. Using person‐centred analyses, we identified four clusters: high functioning, low functioning, asynchronous (mothers above average on two of four dimensions and children below), and below average. Mothers in the low‐functioning cluster had lower income, less social support, more of the borderline feature of negative relationships, and more depression than did mothers in the high‐functioning cluster. The children in the low‐functioning group had more risk factors for BPD (physical abuse, neglect, and separation from, or loss of caregivers, and negative narrative representations of the mother–child relationship in their stories) than did children in the high‐functioning group. The asynchronous group included older girls who were over‐responsive and over‐involving with their mothers in an apparent role reversal. Interventions targeting emotional availability may provide a buffer for children facing cumulative risks and help prevent psychopathology.

Highlights

• This paper investigated how mother‐child emotional availability (warmth and closeness) relates to risk factors for borderline personality disorder, including mother‐child role reversal.
• In filmed mother‐child interactions, low emotional availability was associated with risk for borderline personality disorder and role reversal was more likely for older girls.
• Findings support the cumulative risk hypothesis and may inform interventions to improve mother‐child emotional availability to prevent the development of psychopathology.

     

决策权力和社会角色对混合动机冲突决策的影响

以最后报价谈判问题为实验材料,考察了混合动机冲突情境中决策权力和社会角色的影响。结果表明:(1)决策权力对决策者的决定有显著影响。拥有分配权的决策者倾向于采取竞争策略,拥有要求权的决策者倾向于采取平均分配策略,拥有否决权的决策者倾向于采取合作策略。(2)社会角色对决策者的决定有显著影响。与陌生人角色相比,担任好朋友角色的决策者决定得到的点数明显地更低。     

Drunken Role Models: Rescuing Our Sporting Exemplars

It is often claimed that elite professional athletes are role models and as such have certain duties to behave in morally appropriate ways. The argument is that given their influential status and influence, they should be good examples rather than bad ones. In relation to alcohol consumption and the problematic behaviours associated with excessive consumption, many professional athletes are bad role models. They consume too much and behave badly. Drawing on neo-Aristotelian insights I argue the following. First, persons who exhibit good character and virtues like self-control are preferable to those who exemplify vice like recklessness and selfishness in general and in relation to alcohol consumption in particular. To exhibit virtue is both good in itself and preferable from a moral education perspective. In other words it is better to exemplify virtue in front of others who may follow the example. Second, acting well and becoming the right sort is notoriously difficult and the moral atmosphere or the ethos of the culture in which virtue plays out has a significant impact. It is important therefore to include the ethos of sporting practice in any proposed reform of drinking behaviour such that tolerance and tacit promotion of masculine drinking practices is eschewed in favour of responsible and considerate consumption. Finally I argue that we must cultivate the proper virtue of emulation so that people who are admired or esteemed (sporting heroes) by young people in particular are not copied blindly. In other words it is important to cultivate a critical capacity to recognise worthy role models and to avoid identifying with unworthy characters, practices and vices. Part of this process is to highlight proper and worthy role models inside and outside of sport. In conclusion, I believe that although bad role models are grabbing the headlines in relation to problematic drinking practices, there are good role models in sport who should be lauded as exemplars of good character living a worthwhile sporting life. Such characters can show those inside and outside the practice community a more responsible and considerate approach to alcohol.     

Girls’ perceptions of their mothers at work and home: Warm does not mean weak

Upper elementary school girls were surveyed about their mothers’ and fathers’ warmth, competence, and agency at home and how they imagine their parents at work. Mothers’ warmth at home was positively correlated with perceived competence and agency both at home and at work. Differences between daughters’ perceptions of their mothers and fathers at work are discussed.     

论现代传染病防治中医患关系的特点

现代传染病防治中传统的医患关系的内涵和外延都发生了一定的变化,无论是医方还是患方都体现出强烈超医学性和社会性,在社会大防治的概念下医患之间出现一定的界限模糊甚至角色重叠。现代传染病的发展给我们提供了审视医患关系的新视角,引发人们关于医学发展、社会道德的深层次的思考。     

Pain and Bodily Care: Whose Body Matters?

Pain is unpleasant. It is something that one avoids as much as possible. One might then claim that one wants to avoid pain because one cares about one's body. On this view, individuals who do not experience pain as unpleasant and to be avoided, like patients with pain asymbolia, do not care about their body. This conception of pain has been recently defended by Bain [2014 Bain, D. 2014. Pains That Don't Hurt, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 92/2: 305–20.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]] and Klein [forthcoming Klein, C. forthcoming. What Pain Asymbolia Really Shows, Mind. [Google Scholar]]. In their view, one needs to care about one's body for pain to have motivational force. But does one need to care about one's body qua one's own? Or does one merely need to care about the body that happens to be one's own? In this paper, I will consider various interpretations of the notion of bodily care, in light of a series of pathological cases in which patients report pain in a body part that they do not experience as their own. These cases are problematic if one adopts a first-personal interpretation of bodily care, according to which pain requires one to care about what is represented as one's own body. The objection can run as follows. If the patients experience the body part as alien, then they should not care about it. Therefore, they should be similar to patients with pain asymbolia. But they are not. Hence, bodily care is not necessary to pain. To resist this conclusion, one can try to revise the interpretation of the notion of bodily care and to offer alternative interpretations that are not first-personal. However, I will show that that those alternatives also fail to account for these borderline cases of pain.     

Individual Differences in Experiences of and Responses to Guilt and Shame: Examining the Lenses of Gender and Gender Role

How are experiences of and reactions to guilt and shame a function of gendered views of the self? Individual differences in guilt and shame responses were explored in a sample of 104 young adults, most of whom were European American. Results indicated that, although women reported greater proneness to guilt and shame, men reported more trait guilt. Heightened levels of guilt- and shame-proneness were observed among both men and women with traditionally feminine gender roles, whereas a more traditionally masculine self-concept was associated with decreased shame-proneness for women. Gender schematic women favored verbal responses to ameliorate the experience of guilt, whereas gender schematic men preferred action-oriented responses. These results are discussed as gendered outcomes of schematic versus aschematic gender role socialization.     

Scientific information and uncertainty: Challenges for the use of science in policymaking

Science can reinforce the healthy aspects of the politics of the policy process, to identify and further the public interest by discrediting policy options serving only special interests and helping to select among “science-confident” and “hedging” options. To do so, scientists must learn how to manage and communicate the degree of uncertainty in scientific understanding and prediction, lest uncertainty be manipulated to discredit science or to justify inaction. For natural resource and environmental policy, the institutional interests of government agencies, as well as private interests, pose challenges of suppression, over-simplification, or distortion of scientific information. Scientists can combat these maneuvers, but must also look inward to ensure that their own special interests do not undermine the usefulness of science.     

共情的性别差异

共情指的是个体在与人交往的过程中共享并理解他人的情绪状态的倾向, 包括认知共情和情绪共情两种成分。共情在学前阶段没有性别差异。进入中小学阶段以后, 共情出现了性别差异。一方面, 共情的性别差异与个体自身的生理成熟有关。随着年龄增长, 两性逐渐趋向生理成熟, 荷尔蒙分泌增加并出现差异, 其中催产素有助于情绪共情, 睾丸酮则与认知共情有负相关, 两性的共情水平也因此有了显著差异。另一方面, 共情的性别差异与社会性别角色倾向有关。女性的性别角色以关注他人为导向, 与共情有直接相关, 男性的性别角色以关注公平公正为导向, 与共情没有相关。当两性习得各自的性别角色以后, 他们的共情表现就出现了差异, 这一差异在情绪共情方面较为突出。有关共情性别差异的研究虽然取得了丰富的成果, 但仍然有进一步深入挖掘的空间, 未来的研究需要在视角上注重从年龄、性别和文化交互作用的角度进行考察, 在理论上考虑从能力和倾向性的维度区分共情, 在内容上丰富对影响性别差异的各项因素的研究。     

Threat to Parental Role: A Possible Mechanism of Altered Self-Concept Related to Carrier Knowledge

Researchers and clinicians have suggested that learning one is a carrier for a genetic disorder has the potential to alter self-concept. Concerns about self-concept have influenced the development of policies regarding the availability of carrier testing for minors and the informed-consent process. A literature review identified three mechanisms through which self-concept has been proposed to be affected: altered perception of genetic identity, diminished social identity, and an altered perception of health. This paper presents a conceptual framework developed from identity theory and the self's response to threat to propose a fourth mechanism: threat to the parental role. Clarification of the role of self-concept, the threat to self-concept related to carrier knowledge, and coping behaviors activated in response to this threat would help to target appropriate genetic counseling interventions.